Today's Music of the Day is Manners, by Passion Pit. This is apparently the group's debut album (an EP having been released in 2008), and was just released in May of this year.
Manners is very much an extension of music such as Of Montreal or possibly a sugar-high LCD Soundsystem. It sounds perhaps closest to recent festival darling MGMT. Does it have merit of its own, or is this a second rate album by a band that only has a setting for 'cute'?
Personally, this album isn't going to make any 'best-of' lists that I have any say in. It's largely electronic, with a sprinkle of sampling, and voiced exclusively in falsetto. There are plenty of sound effects here, claps, chimes. The tenth track, "Sleepyhead" seems to be the most popular, but it's also one of the most grating, with a '45 record played at 78' warble droning through the backdrop of the song.
There are a couple songs which I'm not completely against here. "Swimming in the Flood" and "Let Your Love Grow Tall" seem to be more in touch with the emotions they attempt to convey than the rest of the album. Specifically, "Swimming in the Flood" decelerates the general pace of the album from Mountain Dew to, say, lemonade, and it's a welcome change of pace and infusion of introspection that the rest of the album lacks.
This album review comes with a fair number of concessions. Yes, I'll concede that I prefer my music more morose and well-read. I'll also concede that this electronic / synthetic music is not what I prefer, having come to enjoy a more traditional / organic sound from music. I'm sure that Passion Pit would be fun to see at a festival or even just a bar large enough for some bouncing around near the stage. However, this album failed to endear itself to me over the course of four or five listens, and I have serious doubts about its ability to change my opinion over the course of another few weeks.
In Short: This is a fun, "summer" album that will probably be heard at shopping malls everywhere in the coming months. There are plenty of good electronic albums out there that don't equate to a chorus of caffeinated birds.
In Other News:
Art Festival this weekend! Somehow, I hope to avoid eating a funnel cake or something equally unhealthy.
Is it bad if I'm already looking forward to the four-day work week next week? Does anyone who reads this have plans to go to 80/35?